


Choose You

by BlackandGrey



Category: Carry On - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Angst, Enemies to Lovers, Homosexuality, Love, M/M, Sexual References, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2018-10-11 19:37:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 21,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10472598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackandGrey/pseuds/BlackandGrey
Summary: Simon has always hated Baz and Baz has always hated Simon; this is the one unwavering constant in Simon's life even as everything else changes around him. What happens when the one thing he always thought he could rely on starts to crumble?M for language pretty much





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first longish fic, sorry if it is very bad and I hope someone likes it anyway XD

**Simon**

  Normality. That’s how it feels to return to Watford after six agonising summer weeks in whatever care home I have been dumped in. It feels like coming home.

 As soon as I walk through the opening gates to my school, my home, I am almost swept off of my feet by Penny’s embrace, her magic washing over me like a vibrant sea of colour, sinking weeks of restlessness and agitation. I can hardly keep from grinning, so I drown my smile in my best friend’s bushy hair.

  “It’s so good to see you!” She squeals and can’t stop chattering as we make our way over to Mummer’s house so that I can dump my bags, her eyes bright and animated as she recounts her summer; seeing her like this makes me feel more awake than I have for months, as if for once the Normals are the far-fetched dream and not this spectacular world I have come to know as my own.

  “How bad was it this year?”

  “Not too bad, Penny at least no more than usual.”

  She must notice something in my voice and for a second she slows down and stares deep in to my eyes, her stare penetrating me as it always does, yet her eyes are momentarily glassy.

  “But Simon, you look terrible” she breathes.

  “Exactly, the usual return from the Normals then?” I grin back, unnerved for only a beat and she just laughs, yet the worried crease in her brow remains.

  After putting my stuff away, we head over to the dining hall for tea and sour cherry scones- Damn those scones are good. Sometimes I find myself dreaming about them after months of cheap, tasteless food in the summer.

  “So how’s Micah?” I ask Penny through a mouthful of crumbs. Penny’s face lights up at the mention of her American boyfriend.

  “He’s really good actually, _we_ are really good”. I smile at her affectionately. I’m happy for her, for both of them but I can’t help the pang of sadness that I feel when I think about her going to live so far away after Watford.

  “Have you talked to Agatha at all since..?” she inquires. _Agatha._ Although she trails off, both of us know exactly what she’s talking about.

  “No, you know that no one’s allowed to contact me in the summer”. Penny just nods but looks at me questioningly before sipping the rest of her tea. I look away.

  After a few days, I settle into the simple, routine life that Watford offers me. I get used to being around friendly (although sometimes awed) faces instead of the cruel, thuggish ones that surround my summer homes. I get used to the magic in the air, in everyone and in constant use; pencil cases flying across classrooms and Penny reheating food that I take too long to eat. I get used to the luxury of my own room- one that I will not be able to enjoy for long due to the antagonizing existence of my roommate. Baz.

  Although I hate to admit it, Baz may have one of the biggest influences on my life here at Watford, and most definitely the worst! He’s evil, and I’m sure he’s a vampire even though no one believes me. I still can’t decipher why he hasn’t yet been expelled for the numerous pranks and sometimes even crimes he has committed against me; like that time with the chimera… Merlin, I hate him. Still, he doesn’t make the worst roommate- the anathema stops him from harming me inside the room and he keeps all his stuff tidy and out of the way (probably because he’s worried that I’ll mess it up). None of this stops me from worrying over what he’s plotting next though, and I can often barely sleep knowing that he is just across the room, his almost silent breathing still ringing like a warning bell in my ears.

  But perhaps the worst part about being roommates with Baz is the way Agatha, my girlfriend, looks at him. And the way he responds. Agatha is beautiful, the most beautiful girl I have ever seen, but not arrogant or stupid or silly. Agatha is pretty much perfect, which is why I wonder how she ended up with me- the most defective chosen one ever. No wonder she stares longingly at Baz with his flawless, marble skin and ebony waves of hair, not to mention his amazing power and control of magic. Merlin, I hate him and soon he will return and just about ruin every lesson we share with his constant mocking and unruffled responses every time I try to retaliate. Every time he smirks coolly at Agatha and she can’t look away from his cold, grey eyes. Every time he murmurs something in her ear and she giggles like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard. Every time she clasps his hands in the middle of the woods, gazing up at like he’s the only boy on the planet.

  Merlin, I hate him.

Time passes quickly at Watford, like a spell has been cast over me so that sunny days and tranquil conversations slip through my fingers, ungraspable as leprechaun gold, classes drawing ever nearer. It’s not that I don’t enjoy school here- it’s the only place I feel as if I belong, as if I am tied somewhere or part of something bigger than myself, a crowd of unwanted kids and even my own uncontrollable destiny. I love being here, but I don’t love the anxiety that comes with lessons, expectations and, of course, going off. Despite being fore-told for generations, featured in nursery rhymes for magician’s children and taken from the unwanted kid’s home by the Mage himself, my magic isn’t like anyone else’s; it doesn’t flow through me like a fucking river or liquid fire or however anyone else describes it. When I draw on my powers, it’s more like an explosion: irrepressible, wild, deadly.

  I saunter slowly across the Great lawn, the last of the burning summer sun preventing me from moving any faster than an amble, even though I know that I’ll be late for tea with Penny. As I’m passing past the big, wrought-iron gates I see a car pull up and I stop in my tracks, I know that car. It’s Agatha.

  I falter, torn between running over to her and pretending that nothing has changed or avoiding her completely. I choose the latter but wait too long and she’s seen me and she’s waving and she’s smiling her pearly white smile (is it me or are her eyes not smiling with the rest of her face?) and in any case it’s too late to run away. Raising my hand hesitantly, I try to smile back, all grimacing teeth and snarling lips.

  Agatha must see through my terrible acting as she stops waving and walks slowly but purposefully over to me. I pull her into an awkward hug that she returns half-heartedly. Smiling weakly into her sky eyes, I ask how her holiday was even though she looks uncomfortable.

  “Fine, nothing out of the ordinary.”

  She doesn’t ask me about mine. Everyone stopped asking about my holidays years ago. We exchange a glance and I see in her eyes that she can tell that I saw her and Baz last year. She takes my hands in hers, mine rough and ugly against her porcelain skin. I wonder if the nothing I feel as we touch has always been there. I wonder if it was there the last time I saw her or if she felt a spark when she held Baz’s hands like this in the woods last term, a burn of desire as her magic mingled with Baz’s fiery one. I take a shuddery breath before I meet her gaze again, trying to make my eyes as unfeeling as possible.

  “Simon” she whispers and I can feel the pity in her voice as she tells me that we should take another break. As if we haven’t had enough already. But this is how it has always been with Agatha; our perfect, inescapable destiny together too boring and too immovable for her, so that she has to pretend that she is free of it, for a time, before she comes back to me. And of course she always comes back. But before then is the awkwardness of her sitting away from me and Penny in the hall, alone and closer to Baz than to us (of course).

  I feel the familiar anger stir inside of me as I think of Baz- his insane widow’s peak making him as stereo-typical as a villain that tries to steal the hero’s girl. The only non-stereo-typical part about him is that it often looks like he might succeed. (She’ll come back, she’ll come back to me.) (Will she? She will). I say a decidedly unemotional goodbye to Agatha (I’ll see her in class) and go to meet Penny, my hopes of a picture-perfect few weeks before lessons begin and my enemy returns dashed in a creamy white hand and a soft voice.

  Merlin, I hate him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Baz**

Relief. Coming back to Watford is always a relief, despite everything. Despite prejudice from the Mage. Despite Bunce’s close-call attempts to beat me in class. Despite Simon fucking Snow. Watford is a relief.

  Soon after a hasty goodbye to my aunt Fiona, I find myself spelling open my bedroom door. _Our_ bedroom door I remind myself as I survey the mess that Snow has made of his side of the room.

  He always arrives at least a week or two early in order to escape whatever hideous Normal home the Mage has dumped him in at the first possible opportunity. My side of the room remains impeccable throughout the year of course, just like my bedroom at home, although that doesn’t come with the golden boy for a roommate.

  Merlin, I hate him.

  I arrived in the afternoon and decide to skip dinner in favour of hunting in the catacombs and an early night. I’ll just have to face Snow again tomorrow and he’s sure to be predictably angry and out of control as always, especially considering the scene that Agatha decided to fabricate last term, practically trying to seduce me in the woods, which Snow happened to stumble upon. What a sweet, innocent, good little girl. As if. I know my father would love it if I dated Agatha; beautiful, rich and with Pitch-worthy manners but the only interest I have in her is messing with Snow. It’s grand to see him fuming and riled up all because of one wink in his girlfriend’s direction. And anyway, even if I did want her, she wouldn’t stay with me for long, she can never stay away from her perfect, destined future with the chosen one for long. All she wants is distraction, a feeling of liberation and choice that will never really be hers. That she never really even wants. Poor sweet Agatha. At least she has a future, while mine is destined to be snatched away early by Simon Snow. Merlin, I hate him.

  I always wake up early, and my first morning at Watford is no exception, especially considering Snow’s blasted habit of leaving the windows open, bars of filtering light pricking my skin as soon as the sun rises. I slowly survey the room, frowning at Snow’s side, his one non-uniform outfit already sprawled across the floor with the rest of his stuff. Finally, I glance at the Chosen One himself, his body curled up in a protective position facing away from me (he’s scared that I’m a vampire.) (Which I am, although no one believes him). His tawny hair glows gold in the morning sun and I mentally curse him as I run a hand through my own ebony waves, feeling slighted once again at this subtle reminder of my own predicament. Snow is the perfect golden boy, gleaming in the sun while I, through no fault of my own, am confined to shadows and sneaking through dark alleyways, a life of concealment and secrets.  A life of unjust treatment and suspicion because of who I am. Because of what I am.

   A monster.

  Proving my point, I feel my fangs start to poke in to my gums as Snow’s trade-mark smell of soap and smoking excitement fills my nostrils and I rise to take a shower. Coming back into our room, I notice Snow stirring; he always wakes up late but gets dressed at record speed just to make sure he can keep feeding that scone addiction he has. I, on the other hand, rise early to feed an addiction of a more sinister kind in the catacombs. He wakes up in a start and I smirk at catching him in such a panicked, vulnerable state. He seems to notice me too as he glares back viscously. “You’re back.” he says simply and I just raise one eyebrow at his apparent realisation. “Such incomparable observational skills you have Snow” I respond levelly and begin binding my tie in the mirror. He just grunts in response and I roll my eyes.

   “So how’s Wellbelove?” I ask innocently and his attention snaps back to me like a well-trained dog. I see the reflection of his lips behind my own start to rise in a snarl before he calms himself back down- a rare occurrence for Snow, he usually doesn’t possess such control.

  “Fine.” he retorts far too quickly and I cock an eyebrow but don’t press it further, there will be plenty of time to drive Snow insane this year. I admire my perfectly knotted tie, flash Snow one last well-rehearsed smirk and make for the door, muttering only a quick “Can’t wait to see her then” before striding away, well-pleased.

  I gracefully stride down the stairs, wondering what’s going on between the golden couple and smirking when I remember that it’s probably because of me. Honestly, I’ve never understood her strange fascination with me when she’s always had everyone else wrapped around her little finger. But maybe that’s it, I’m probably the only person in this whole fucking school that isn’t obsessed with her (and that’s including the teachers). It must get boring, being perfect which is where I come in- the big bad Pitch that her parents won’t approve of, that will shock everyone and mar her spotless image (not permanently of course). Snow’s never had this problem because, despite it probably being true that he is the most powerful mage in the world, there is a big difference between possessing power and controlling it. And Snow can’t control it for shit.

  Reaching the Hall, I sit down between Dev and Niall who each greet me with a casual nod of the head and I start pouring myself some tea. After a few minutes of nothingness, Wellbelove walks in, barely looking around before sitting as far as is physically possible from Bunce- I was right then, they must be on another break. I smirk. Only seconds after she has grabbed a plate of food, the doors swing open once again and Snow rushes over to Bunce and begins talking animatedly. I see Agatha staring appraisingly over at the two of them. _Oh_ I laugh to myself. Agatha Wellbelove jealous of shabby Penelope Bunce. Snow must have mentioned her because Bunce looks over at Wellbelove with emotionless eyes that the other girl can’t seem to meet.

  As soon as she looks away, Agatha’s eyes immediately lock with mine. It takes everything I have not to roll my eyes as she flutters her eyelashes and gives me what I presume is supposed to be a seductive smile. She is all white teeth and delicate features but I have never been able to fully appreciate her on-the-surface beauty. Her only complexity seems to be her half-hearted rebellions against fate, and even if that had made her even somewhat interesting, she always ruins it by running right back to where she is supposed to be until it seems that nothing ever changed.

  I give her a long cool look, the corner of my mouth rising slightly, matching her intensity until she grins nervously and trains her sapphire gaze back down to her plate, her cheeks colouring in a doll-like blush.

  I look straight over at Snow, to judge his reaction and I’m not disappointed, he is giving me a hard, angry look that I leer at before carrying on with my breakfast. It is definitely a relief to be back.


	3. Chapter 3

**Simon**

  Reality. Not even really a feeling, yet that is how I feel- as if reality has finally set in after the break up with Agatha, Baz's return and the start of lessons. The world of Mages is not as flawless as I always build it up to be. But things are going okay. Better than okay really; minimal awkwardness (and interaction) with Agatha, no blowing up in lessons (yet, as Baz likes to remind me) and days spent practicing magic or lounging on the Great Lawn with my best friend. Yes, things are much better than okay.

  But not today. After sleeping late and Baz not having the courtesy to wake me for breakfast (Merlin, I hate him), I had to rush down to Politickal Science without a single sour cherry scone. Then I couldn't focus at all with Baz's smoky eyes boring deep holes into the back of my head, making it almost impossible not to turn around and snarl at his perfectly composed face.

  Penny always tries to help but ends up making it worse, telling me to ignore him, but how can I ignore Baz- my opposite, rival, perfect enemy that I know is destined to die at my hand (or me at his). So of course I return his stare, my eyes turning poisonous as soon as he starts smirking at my gritted teeth and ruffled hair that I didn't have time to tame this morning.

  By the time the lesson ends, I am itching to get out of the classroom (and Baz's presence) and so I rush straight down to the football pitch with Penny- it's the first match of the term and crowds of students are already starting to throng around the pitch. I don't even know why we still come to watch; Penny has no interest in the game and I'm not good enough for the team, but I suppose that it would feel wrong not to watch in our last year after coming to every match for the past seven just to keep an eye on Baz. And of course, he is as lithe and graceful on the pitch as he has been every day that I have known him- slick and completely unflappable.

  The match is not long and Baz's team win with him leading them as striker. I start to leave as soon as the scores are announced, not keen on staying to see the jubilance of the winning team, formally shaking hands with the losers; not dejected for long, but more than willing to join in the celebrations. Just as I am crossing the emptying field on my way to Mummer's house, a flash of sunlight hair gleams in my vision and I stop to glimpse Agatha standing a little ways off, towards the woods. I look over again and realise that she is not alone as I first thought, but staring up at a tall figure in football shorts, half hidden in the shadows of the trees, his eyes locked not on her but me.

**Baz**

  I’ve always loved football, and not just because it’s yet another thing that I am far superior to Snow at, or even just because I am superior at it in general. I love the feel of the wind lashing against my skin and ripping at my clothes. I love the burn in my legs as I push myself forward, forever chasing the ball. I love the distraction, the fact that it makes me feel completely and utterly alive, even if that part is just an illusion. Snow being there does make it better though, so I can stare him down and smirk whenever I score a goal and see his cobalt eyes darken in jealousy when everyone (especially Wellbelove) cheers.

  Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if the Crucible hadn’t cast the two of us together. Would I have spent the past seven years pranking, mocking, insulting someone else? Would I have been less careful without the chosen one surveying everything I did and accidentally relieved a human of their blood? Would my family have still nagged and nagged and nagged until I spied and fought and plotted against him at every available opportunity?

   My family has always been close, which is why I have been a part of their plans to take down the Mage (and the Mage’s heir) for as long as I can remember. The Pitches may be brutal, cold and many would say untrustworthy but we never betray each other as we do everyone else. The Pitches have always been close, that is until my mother died.

  Now I feel like my house is in an eternal chill, her bright, burning presence extinguished forever, and I can’t talk to anyone about anything. Anything important anyway. I had no one to talk to when my mother had just died and I felt like I was being eaten away on the inside from the sorrow. I had no one to help me when my body was aching with blood-lust and I could hardly stand the sight of another person, let alone my step mother’s paper cut. I had no one to hold my hand and tell me it was alright when I knew that I didn’t like girls and my father kept on at me about continuing the Pitch line. I didn’t have anyone, but what I did have was Watford and golden curls, gleaming against a stark white pillow, I had fists and a sharp, cruel, Pitch tongue, I had a thousand failed murder plans for the Mage’s heir and I had the absolute, unchangeable, excruciating, unbearable knowledge that Merlin, I didn’t really hate him at all. The knowledge that I, Tyrannus Basilton Pitch, am in love with Simon Snow.

  And that most definitely is not a relief.


	4. Chapter 4

**Simon**

It takes every inch of self-control not to snap my wand in two and throw it to the ground right here and now, but I settle for an internal scream of barely explicable rage and stamping heavily to my room, even before I remember that it is not _mine_ but _ours_ and it is so absolutely infuriating that there is nowhere in this school to escape him.

  Of course, I knew that Agatha had some kind of perverse interest in Baz, and I even admitted to myself that she definitely had a thing for him- but sending longing looks is completely different to this. This is downright betrayal.

  Who cares if she doesn’t want to be with me right now? (Well me obviously but that’s not the point.) She was supposed to be figuring things out, figuring herself out and somehow I don’t think that that is supposed to entail hooking up with her boyfriend’s roommate, even if that roommate is Baz and annoyingly all kinds of good-looking. Wait, no _especially_ if that roommate is Baz, a known vampire for Merlin’s sake.

  I make it quickly back to the room a whole lot faster than I usually do and already I feel the magic start to radiate of my skin. I take deep lungfuls of musty air, trying to lower my heartrate, trying to tell myself that nothing is changing, but my fingers continue to quiver nonetheless and my fists are just aching for confrontation. But this is only external and deep down I know that I don’t want Baz to come back up here right away so that I can pummel him senseless and get myself thrown out of the only home I have ever known in the process. _Fuck._ Since when did he get me this worked up? Well, since always but since when have I lost control this completely? Not for a long while, and definitely not over something as trivial as a girl.

  But she’s not just any girl is she? She is everything; a present, a future, a hope for happiness I never knew before I came here. I mentally shake my head, this is the kind of talk that drives her away and towards Baz time and time again, she never likes to talk about our future or plan ahead and she hates my ideas of fate even more, although I stopped bringing that particular line of conversation up a long time ago. I guess I just don’t really get it, I never say the right things and even when I try and say something romantic it always backfires in her pissed off and yelling at me, while I stare at my hands and wonder where I went wrong.

 

**Baz**

  Triumph. Triumph is staring at Snow until he loses his cool. Triumph is making him late for lessons so that his hair sticks up in a wild halo around his head and not the half-tamed cap of curls he usually wears. Triumph is the anger on Snow's face when Agatha is after me and I can pretend that his jealousy is over me and not her.

  I can practically smell smoke as Snow starts fuming, or maybe that is just his normal scent. (His magic smells of smoking green wood and campfires.) (I shouldn't know this.) I can see him hesitating, eyes staring in to mine and I am captivated. I cannot look away. Before I can see if he has decided to walk over, I'm distracted by Agatha, stepping even closer to me.

  "I know you feel it too Basil." She murmurs as if she alone can speak my name.

  "I know when our eyes meet across the hall. I know when you whisper those sly comments in my ear. I know when you sweep me away from Simon on the dance floor. I _know_."

I laugh quietly at her and respond coolly

  "Agatha, whatever you think you know is wrong. You are destined to a golden life with the golden boy. I'm destined to die alone and I think you know that no one can change that- least of all us."

  I look back up and Snow has gone. She's getting angry now, eyes are flashing as she responds.

  "Why does no one ever ask me what I want? I thought that you at least would understand, I never agreed to Simon Snow and having my whole life planned out before me!"

  I step back coldly, somehow surprised by her honesty yet disgusted at her selfishness.

  "And I never agreed to be the bad guy in someone else's hero story, so if you know how to escape destiny, make sure to let me know." I snarl looking back down at her before side-stepping around her to head back to my room. She grabs my arm, her eyes shining up pleadingly at mine.

  "Maybe I just want something different! No one else around here is in the least bit interesting." She cries, her voice rising in pitch as she gets more and more flustered.

  "Well good luck finding interesting in this stupidly predictable fairy tale world, Agatha" I practically spit before ripping my arm from her grasp and stalking away.

  This is not triumph.

  Because no matter how hard she tries, neither of us have a hope in hell of evading fate. I know this because I'm half-way there already. Purgatory is being a vampire, hated and forever alone. It is being roommates with the boy you love, who can never, ever love you back. It is never being able to share your feelings with anyone or crush them in to non-existence, but I'm not in hell yet. Hell is never being able to see Simon Snow's face again, or taunt him in to a frenzy just to make him feel something, anything towards you. And I'm not there yet. I'm just on the wrong side in a fairy tale, the big bad wolf that can't stop the prince marrying the princess.

  When I get back to our messy fucking room, Snow is already there. I spin on my heel ready to leave, but he is still mad, his magic practically sparking on his skin.

  "What the fuck was that?" he growls and, as I turn slowly back around, I can't help my heart sinking at his wretched features, yet he can't know that so I focus on composing my face into the usual, sneering mask.

  "I don't know what you're talking about" I respond, smirking coolly in the way I know will drive him closer and closer to the edge.

  "Just stay away from my girlfriend." he snaps and then I can't help myself because that word scratches my skin and my soul.

  "Ex-girlfriend remember Snow?" His eyes blur, his face contorted in a frantic grimace and that's it. I know I have gone too far.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Simon**

  Fury. His words are like bullets exploding in my ears. I may try to shoot him back, but his icy tongue whips my gun astray; every attempted slight and insult thrown back in my reddening face. I study Baz, my rage-filled vision distorting his cold beauty in to something else. Smirking lips, guarded eyes, a blackened heart- I know my enemy. By now I also know that he never rests and I feel Baz’s amused smile and taunting voice in every pound of my quivering heart. Here, in our room, where fists must be snarling mouths and punches a cool voice, I can never win. But still I fight.

  With every escaping breath I lash but he deflects me time and time again, furious words turned empty and twisted in his slender fingers. Everything about him makes my mind spin, grinds my teeth and clenches my fists until I must give in.

  One fluid, uncontrollable movement and I have grasped his collar in a shaking hand and he is flat against the wall. No escape. Silence rings in my ears and I take pleasure in his for once motionless lips and widening eyes. But again they darken and I know that I have not beaten him for long. Here, the anathema stops me from hurting him. Here, I cannot rip those deadly, amused eyes from his pale face. Here, I cannot beat him down to a bloody pulp just to watch the smile leave his grinning lips. So instead I meet them with my own.

 

**Baz**

  For a heartbeat I cannot react. Snow is kissing me.

What. The. Fuck. Is. Happening.

Simon Snow is kissing me. I am kissing Simon Snow.

 

**Simon**

  Passion. Our lips are crashing together. Forceful, angry, alluring. For a thousand moments I am lost in melting rage and ignorance as Baz begins to respond. We quickly break apart and, breathing heavily, stare at each other. His eyes are liquid silver, searching my resolute gaze, his furrowed brow for once unsteady. Unbidden, thoughts race through my mind as I study Baz’s blown pupils before me, horror and confusion at what has just happened quickly flattened by intrigue and need. Need for more. Somehow in unison, we both move together at the same time and suddenly it is happening again.

  Hatred-fuelled kisses are met with viscous pulls of hair and bleeding lips. I struggle to bend Baz to my will, insults chased by hungry tongues. I drown him in my touch until words of precision and hate are lost to angry moans. I bite his marble skin, sucking the life from his sculpted neck as if it was me that was the vampire.

  Still he retaliates; claiming my bruising lips, hardened eyes, marking my tender skin. I know him. After warily watching him always, he has burst into every dream: nemesis, stalker, abuser, his grey sky gaze more familiar to me than myself. And this is not nothing- fingertips dancing like flames on my bare skin and kisses that send electricity sparking through my entire body are what I have been missing.

  Scratching nails give way to tangled limbs and I can no longer tell our bodies apart. His lips are rougher than Agatha’s but soft and searing, every touch filling my veins with icy fire. When we pull apart I take in every inch of him, his flawless granite skin marked by purple bruises, his carved lips kissed and swollen, his swirling irises made of molten rock. My breath is ragged, my hair tousled and my eyes wild as his usually graceful legs stumble from the room. Finally, he is unnerved.

  I smile.

 

**Baz**

  Confusion. I kissed Simon Snow.

But Snow isn’t gay (Is he?). Snow didn’t kiss me (He did). He hates me (He didn’t stop it). What the fuck is happening.

 This is not good for me. It’s not good that that kiss was better than all the times I imagined it; fighting for dominance, melting him in my very hands until he moans for me, because of me. Thinking about this is not good for me. Trust Snow to confuse anger and sexual tension. Because Snow isn’t gay. (Is he?)

  Ever since end of 5th year and the almost relieving realisation that I would never be able to fulfil what I always knew the families would want of me (to kill the Mage’s heir) I have tried my hardest to bury the feelings exploding inside of me, setting me on fire. But at the back of mind I have always known that Simon Snow will be my demise because I cannot kill him and one of us is destined to die.

  That year I tried everything to escape what I was feeling: avoiding him completely (so he followed me around like an abandoned sheep), walking away in the middle of arguments (which just drove him insane) and even trying to end it all with the fucking chimera. Good luck allowed Snow to go off that day and keep himself alive. Bad luck kept me alive too. This would all be easier if I was dead. Pity I don’t have a death wish.

  I pace outside all night in a futile attempt to sift through what is going on in my mind and what has gone wrong in Snow’s. I suppose one could say that that he has found a way to fight without breaking the roommate’s anathema. Ridiculous. I sleep fitfully in the catacombs, not trusting myself to return to Snow’s presence because of what has just happened and the renewed emotions burning inside of me, my flammable body licked by orange flames yet bathed in the memory of skin brushing delicate skin.

  The next day is pure torture.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Simon**

  My mind is in chaos and I don’t know where to start, so I decide not to think. I just focus on feelings, without wondering where they come from or what they might mean. I’m used to this- shutting my mind off when I can’t cope with the rowdy thoughts running through my brain: like when I found out that magic is real, that I was supposedly some kind of chosen one and now when it feels like the one unwavering constant in my life has become utterly unrecognisable.

  So, I feel confusion. Passing in the corridors, eyeing me from across crowded, empty classrooms, I see something new in Baz and it makes my pulse race. My stomach clenches in feeling: not quite regret, not quite longing, not quite anger. Today my thoughts are not of classes, but of the science of his dilating pupils; anger and hunger crushed together forming something else entirely.

  My day is spent dodging Penny and questioning glances concerning unfamiliar bruises and, once again, our secret binds enemies together. Merlin, I hate him. Yet my hate draws me ever closer, ebony hair calling to fumbling fingers, deadly lips aching for ivory teeth. I hate him. (Do I?) Because every glance in my direction is a pale, slender hand against my cheek. Every dark eyed smirk cutting through my skin and my soul. I don’t think about what any of this means, except that I am not the same.

  Lessons blur into indistinguishable smudges of spells and incompetence, my focus slippery liquid, clinging to nothing. Well, not quite nothing.

  He is seemingly always in my vision, driving me insane with long, emotionless looks of swirling grey cloud and my veins run not with blood but heated arousal. Does this make me gay? Sexuality is not something I ever thought to sit down and contemplate before, it has always seemed inconsequential in comparison to everything else going on. But, honestly, I don’t think it really matters. All that matters right now is the way he is looking at me, and the way it sets my skin ablaze.

  Penny excuses herself from our daily meet up for tea (and of course scones) for a far more important date with the library, so I grudgingly stalk to my (our) room. Grudgingly. Definitely grudgingly (and not at all elated). Baz is sitting at my desk doing homework when I enter and glances up at my approach, eyes dark and amused. I slowly smirk back and step cautiously closer to him, his eyes are impenetrable as always and it drives me crazy not knowing what is going on behind that cool, calm façade.

  “Snow.” He greets, in full control as always and sharply pushes the chair back, wooden legs scratching viscously against the floor and damn I can’t help myself- the looks he’s giving me is coiling desire around my every fibre. I walk over and stand over him, sliding a surprisingly unshaking hand over his jaw, tilting his lips to meet mine.

  The first touch is all it takes for the electricity to flood through me once again and his cool skin is icy fire against mine. We fight back and forth endlessly, tongues battling for control as I lower myself on his lap, fingers curling around his neck.

  Every moan against my lips sends dark desire pulsing through me. Desire for this, for more, for him. All of him. He grasps a fistful of my hair and jerks sharply, dragging our lips apart, my hands wander as I gaze at him, his muscles are lean and taut and his eyes are coloured so many aerated silver shades. I lean forwards and bite gently at the skin of his neck, drawing a deep moan from his throat and relishing in the way I can break him apart so easily. My mind is spinning so quickly, warding me off, telling me that he is my enemy but the voice is muted to echoing whispers by some primal part of my brain that never wants this to end. So I bite and suck and trail my tongue across his neck and jaw, delighting in every intake of breathe that my actions elicit, but suddenly he is jolting away and out of my grasp and only a second later I hear light footsteps pounding up the stairs outside our room.

  I catch my breath as someone raps sharply at the door, meeting Baz’s gaze but he just raises an eyebrow at me. Reluctantly I make my way over to the door and open it.

  “Hi Simon.” It’s Penny.

  “Hey Penny! Er… what are you doing here?” I respond uncomfortably.

  “Well… I finished in the library so I was wondering if you wanted to go down to hang out now?”

  Her brow furrows as I quickly glance at Baz, leaning casually against the wall and smirking at me.

  “Unless you’re busy?” She adds on confoundedly, no doubt sensing my hesitation.

  “No, no I’m free let’s go!” I beam, maybe a little too enthusiastically and all but shove her out the door, quickly shutting it behind me (and hopefully shutting out my thoughts with it.)

  “So that was weird.” Penny comments as we make our way down the stairs, side by side.

  “What was?” I ask nonchalantly, hoping that worry isn’t etched across my face.

  “Well, usually I can hear you and Baz screaming at each other from miles off, but it was pretty silent for you too to be glaring at each other the way you were just now.”

  I breathe relief.

  “Well, we weren’t really arguing.”

  “Huh?”

  “I was shoving him off my desk actually, I think you just saved me from getting a numb hand” I chuckle and she joins in.

  “Simon! You really have to learn to ignore him- fighting could get you kicked out of Watford!”

“I know, I know.” I sigh and swiftly change the subject.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about short chapter.. don't want to post too much at once lol

 

**Baz**

Well, that was a close call. If Bunce hadn’t shown up when she did I don’t think I could’ve resisted picking him up, throwing him on bed and attacking him and that would have been a morbidly uncomfortable loss of control. Sighing, I sit back down in Snow’s chair and attempt to carry on with my homework in a completely futile attempt to distract myself.

  Snow usually returns at around 4:00 from tea (yes I know his timetable and yes I am that lame) so I make sure to head for the catacombs a little before then, my self-control still seeming slightly off-centre and I’m not sure how well I can trust myself, especially without having fed.

  Sighing, I slump against the cool stone wall having just drained about a dozen rats, letting the cold seep into my skull and numb my thoughts. For the life of me, I cannot figure out what Snow has started and I sure as hell don’t want to think about how it’s going to end (other than in heartbreak for me). The only thing I seemingly do know, is that for some reason Snow wants me and, well, who am I to refuse the chosen one? I groan in frustration and desire; he’s given me something so close to what I have longed for for seven years, yet it’s an illusion. And all illusions end at some point, but maybe this isn’t how I should be thinking about it. True, I could turn him away (that’s if he even tries anything again) and although it would be awfully painful I know I could do it. But I’ve never been any good at denying myself the things I want and it’s plain foolish to try to deny the fact that I want him any way I can have him. As it appears he is just as foolish and, impossibly, he wants me too. Smirking slightly, I straighten up feeling a little lighter and walk back out of the catacombs. It’s later than I thought, I must’ve spent too long contemplating as day has faded into shadowy dusk. The air is heavy, the last fading flickers of sunlight dying on the limits of the horizon, gradually receding into nothingness and giving way to purple-edged night. I breathe a deep breath of darkening air, steeling myself, amending my sneering mask before stalking up to our room. I don’t hesitate before swinging the door open, but I needn’t have worried as Snow is already curled up and asleep. Inhaling deeply, I shut the door quietly behind me and head to the bathroom, hoping the sound of water won’t wake him.

  I slowly relax under the jets of steaming hot water, my muscles pummelled into submission.  I usually like to take showers in the mornings but after such a stressful couple of days, I need to regain at least some sense of control and this emetic ritual makes me feel like myself again. I sigh deeply, a thousand images swirling through my mind- vibrant flashes of anger and torment and vibrant passion claiming me, ripping through every part of my body and making me ache. Tearing me out of my violent thoughts, the water turns an icy cold- I must’ve used up all the hot but I am distantly grateful as I shut the shower off and step cautiously back into the room. I shouldn’t have bothered trying to be quiet because there he is- the chosen one sitting up in his bed, wide, luminous eyes colouring my pale skin red. I freeze in the doorway, shirtless and vulnerable, moonlight reflecting dully off of his golden hair, stained bronze in the pale light and his features etched in dimness of the night.

  He is beautiful. I’ve always thought that, since the first time he approached me, coerced by the crucible with sunlight dazzling his hair and his eyes smooth as crystal lakes, his hand out stretched in anxious hope while I tried to pretend that I didn’t feel the pull as much as he did.

  He blinks at me slowly, long eyelashes tearing shadows like grazes down his cheeks, all ferocity, hunger and aggression dissipated by dark tranquillity. I feel like I’m in a trance, under his serene spell as I step sluggishly towards him, all grace irrelevant and vanished at least for now. His lips part, ashen and painted in shades of black and grey, the moon bleeding out his colour, yet again I am powerless and apprehended.

  “Baz.” He murmurs and just the sound of my name caressing his lips sends shivers scraping across my skin and the daze is lifted, albeit only slightly but enough to shake me awake and traipse towards my own bed and not his. I lie awake for a long time, gazing across at him, imagining I can see the details of his face through the dark. Eventually I exhale imperceptibly and turn on to my other side to stare at the wall instead.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took a while, kinda also need a beta if anyone would be up for that. Thank you for the encouraging comments, they mean the world and keep me writing :)

**Simon**

  When I wake up, Baz’s bed is empty and there’s no sign of him anywhere in the room. I sigh as I dress, mentally chastising myself for the faint flickers of disappointment that accompany this realisation. Don’t think.

  I half expect him to be missing from the hall too, but he’s there, eyes cool and appraising as always, but I studiously ignore him as I join Penny -as per fucking usual.

  For once she is silent and I eye her with concern but she just faintly smirks and nudges me in Agatha’s direction. Sitting all the way across the hall, I can’t make out her expression but she’s obviously staring across at me and Penny.

  “What’s her problem?” I ask casually, trying and failing to assume indifference, but the truth is although of course I am missing her and would do anything to have her back, the break up isn’t quite as hard to take as it usually is. Yes, she’s in every class flicking gold-threaded hair over her shoulder and tossing demure, doe-eyed glances either in mine or Baz’s general direction, but the all-consuming yearning for her is conspicuously absent- yet another thing that I don’t think too hard about.

  “I think she’s jealous.” Penny smirks again, an altogether strange expression on her round face but one that occurs increasingly frequently whenever Agatha comes up.

  “Jealous? But she’s the one that broke up with me!”  
Penny turns back to me and grins, patting me on the shoulder.

  “Don’t worry Simon, somethings are meant for only girls to understand.”

  I roll my eyes. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll ever get me head around the pair of them. Sighing, I let my gaze drift and so, of course, it lands back on Baz who is already sneering in my direction, apparently very amused about the interactions taking place between Penny and Agatha, while I am still mercilessly in the dark.

  “Whatever” I mutter under my breath, for once glad when the bell sounds and I can go to class.

  The weekend can’t come soon enough, bringing at least some kind of semblance of an end to all the strangeness of the past week, bringing with it another football match and when Penny asks if I want to watch this one I meditatively decline and at her startled look I just come up with various stupid excuses- like “Too much homework” and “I think I’ve just grown out of these childish games” which shock her even more into amused approval (probably because both are excuses she’s used on me multiple times).

  Guilty as I feel for lying to her, the truth really doesn’t bear much contemplation- I just don’t want to see Baz. Yesterday I got back to the room while he was out (most likely still in the catacombs, which also doesn’t really bear contemplation.) (He’s a fucking vampire! I kissed a vampire!) and so I have mercifully been able to avoid him for a whole day, which really is a lot more difficult than it sounds.

  I do vaguely miss the atmosphere of a roaring crowd and the excitement every time Baz’s opposition scores a goal, but it’s not worth it; not worth the pain, the confusion, not worth having to face up to everything I have started. So I lie in a daze on my bed, still distantly able to hear echoes of the crowd cheering. I must drift off because when the door slams I am suddenly jolted back awake to swirling grey eyes glaring straight at me, sudden ferocity spinning through their depths and I glance back in surprise. His face is hot and sweaty from exertion.

  “You okay?” I mumble tiredly  
He doesn’t say a word but storms in to the bathroom, all eloquence seemingly forgotten and I can soon hear the water running and lie there, my head spinning and confused until he stalks back out again, a little calmer, towel wrapped around his waist, chest still a little damp, muscles shifting as he walks and I am mesmerized.

  “What are you doing?” he barks, and I look back up in mild surprise.

  “Err… just sleeping” I say confused but he just glowers back at me yet again. “Why?”

  “You know, seeing your idiotic face around always works me up a bit.” He sneers, walking slowly closer to me, still lying sprawled on my bed.

  “It always gives me that extra _edge_.” He bends over so his mouth is right next to my ear.  
“And it’s incredibly disconcerting when you don’t show up for no apparent reason…”

  I inhale sharply at the feel of his breath ghosting over my ear but then he places his hands on my shoulders, pressing me further into the mattress and swings one leg over so he’s straddling me. I moan.

  “I’m sorry that you feel _I’m_ somehow responsible for _your_ bad mood” I smirk, leaning up on my forearms so our faces are mere centimetres apart.

  He stills suddenly, so I freeze too, letting my eyes roam across his face: wandering across his cheekbones, down his sloping nose, caressing his lips. His eyes are coloured pale, framed by long lashes that I’m close enough to count and when he breathes I can almost taste it. His nostrils flare and his eyes slam shut, closing me out but when he opens them again they are alight with something dark, something dangerous, something scorching.

  In one fluid motion he has captured my lips and my body with his own, his hands running through my hair and tugging, making something hot awaken inside of me. Each kiss is searing, burning, claiming my mouth, my tongue, every part of me and I willing give up every fibre. It is intoxicating, making me heady with want, outright desire. He is one hard line against me, every muscle taut and sculpted and _right_ \- coherent thought has all but dissipated from my mind. His hands are everywhere, in my hair, whispering over my face, fumbling with my belt. Somewhere, buried deep in my mind, I know that this is a bad idea but with Baz’s teeth tugging on my neck it seems the absolute opposite.

  He pauses for a moment, head above my jeans, eyes pleading relief, seeking consent and I grant it with a moan. He continues oh so slowly and if I had been able to form complete sentences I might have begged “Don’t stop, you’ll kill me if you stop” but I can’t and even beneath this thin surface of passion and lust and need, every inch of me is urging him to carry on, wanting anything he will give me but any inspection I might have made of my own psychology is lost in hot, wet ecstasy and all too soon I am seeing stars, perhaps he has killed me anyway.

  I pant, looking down at him, meeting his gaze pupil to pupil and I want to say something, somehow express the emotion churning in my stomach and threatening to overwhelm me, but I can’t and plant a soft kiss on his lips instead. His fingers trails over my jaw until he pulls back, grey eyes staring at me, staring through me until he abruptly stands up, breaking the trance and he disappears into the bathroom before emerging fully dressed and striding from the room. I am left watching impassively with only a dull ache grazing my lungs and disbelief colouring my eyes to know that I didn’t imagine it. I breathe out.  
He has stolen all of my control, I think dazedly, I need to take it back. But it’s just so hard to say no when he’s everywhere, fingers crawling over my skin and scraping against my lips but I can’t give in. 7 years of hatred and distain can’t disappear within a week. I sigh, emotion welling up, coiling around my ribs, running through my very veins but I push it down. It’s time to be strong.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for the comments, they really make me carry on (no pun intended ;)) and they make my day too.  
> Also low-key still need a beta so if anyone wants to, let me know no pressure. Hope u like the chapter!

**Simon**

The next day passes far too quickly, a haze of disregarded lessons and incoherent conversations sliding unstoppably past me until I suddenly find myself leaning against the old yew tree on the lawn with Penny’s head resting on my legs, gazing distantly at the slowly setting sun. The red-streaked beauty of the fading rays painted across the sky is lost on my un-seeing eyes as I spend far too much time not thinking the unthinkable.  
I am snapped out of my disjointed reverie by the prickling along my neck that comes with Penny’s wide-eyed stare. Her cryptic gaze makes me feel immediately uncomfortable, as if she really can pierce my thoughts with those sharp eyes and see everything I am thinking.  
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong Simon?” her voice is low, as if trying to reassure me that she is trustworthy, that I can bleed all my secrets to her and no one else has to know, as if I need reminding that she is the only reliable person in my life. I shift awkwardly and debate telling her everything, just to let her quick mind scrutinise it all and tell me exactly what is going on, but I can’t. Not this time when the secret I have to unfold is so illogical, so unexpected even to myself.  
“Nothing at all” I respond lightly forcing my face in to an optimistic smile, although even I can tell that it looks strained. She sits up and searches my gaze once more, but if she sees anything decides not to push it and just nods unintelligibly. I breathe an inaudible sigh of relief.  
As Penny turns back to regard the vividly progressing sky, I look back out across the lawn and almost jump at the unimposing presence pacing towards us. Baz’s silhouette is tall, long-limbed and elegant even now as he abruptly stops his careful strides, eyes flickering between me and Penny in the orange-tinted light. I can barely breathe as he stands there watching us, the weight of his heavy-lidded gaze filling me with indescribable emotions that I can no longer stand and so I jump up, forcing those feelings in to submission and replacing them with an ancient fury instead.  
“What do you want?” I snarl, feeling a twinge of something unfamiliar as Baz all but winces at my tone.  
“Looking for Agatha? Well she’s not here so you can piss off and leave us alone. Leave her alone while you’re at it too.” In less than a moment’s hesitation his old walls are up (for that is what I know them as now-walls guarding something completely different) and he is sneering down at me once again.  
“If I were looking for Agatha all I would have to do is call and she would come”. He smirks and I glance over at Penny’s sympathetic look. At her he-might-kind-of-have-a-point look and I scowl back at him before stalking heatedly closer and closer until my eyes are level with the long slope of his nose. Slowly, I raise my palms and push him as hard as I can. He isn’t expecting it somehow, after everything and ends up sprawled on the floor. Penny gasps and rushes over as I advance on him, his composed features suddenly driving me insane.  
“Simon! Stop it!” she cries grasping my arm and pulling me away.  
“Pushing leads to fighting Simon, and we both know what fighting leads to.” Baz calls nonchalantly after us and I can barely keep from shaking as he adds “You could just ask you know.”  
In some way, impossibly so, it seems that everything and nothing has changed.  
  
**Baz**

Desire. Tonight I retire early to our room, daggers in my stomach simultaneously pushing me away from the wary stares of Niall and Dev at my discoloured neck and preventing me from avoiding Snow any longer, but as I am walking back to our room I see him sitting there next to Bunce and his presence stops me short. For some (obviously unknown) reason, what happened last night seems to be making him ten times more angry than before. It was just too much, feeling Simon contract and shudder against every move I made, taste him on my very tongue, have him kiss me softly like actually he wanted to, like he actually cares and so I had to run, make a fast escape before I did something stupid. Like tell him I love him.  
I run straight back up to our room after Bunce pulls him away and tensely await his return amid the security of the anathema.  
The minutes tick by so slowly until he returns and I get more and more restless. I perch cautiously on his bed and wait, anxiety clenching my stomach in knots and perspiring on my usually cool skin because I have no idea about what is going to happen when he comes back and I have never felt this out of control.  
His arrival is like a poisonous arrow racing towards my chest. Sharp and hard yet satisfyingly unavoidable. Predatorial. Hunger gleams unversed in his cobalt eyes, his locked jaw barely concealing hatred as he shoves me hard on to the floor for the second time this day. I know immediately that he won’t ignore me, maybe I should’ve avoided him longer.  
Our eyes meet for one intense moment, that clear, cornflower blue searching tirelessly in my own momentarily unguarded gaze until his lips claim mine once again, his blazing touch scorching my fragile skin and fusing our bodies until we move as one. More than I could have ever hoped for, yet still somehow not enough, my entire body aches for Simon Snow, golden curls and the smell of smoke. He is abrasive and physical, still fighting even if it has to be like this where our weapons are harsh fingers and lingering kisses, the wounds we inflict goose bumps and moans of submission and of course I fight him back, because this is more than I ever expected to have, ever dared to dream of- I can make Snow shudder beneath my fingers and draw notes of desire as if I was playing my violin.  
His hands are in my hair, each pull a needle prick against my scalp sending fiery arousal racing through my entire body. My fingers stroke against his throat eliciting deep groans every time my nails scratch gently at his skin. Hands slip lower and our brutal rhythm is fragmented only by bursts of whirling pleasure and fireworks against my eyelids.  
Gradually, my thudding heart slows- coarse nails smoothing in to delicate fingers, scratches lulled into soft caresses and perhaps we are fighting no longer- maybe we never were. I know that I haven’t hated him for years although his feelings have never matched mine about anything- least of all about each other. Yet his hands still grasp at me and tug softly at my hair. Yet every touch still jolts my body alive. Yet he still doesn’t say no. And I never could resist him.


	10. Chapter 10

**Simon**

Regret. When I awake to stale breathe against my cheek, I know that something has come undone, and this time everything is different. Gazing down at Baz’s tranquil, sleeping face, the sneer and ferocity of his waking soul erased, I cannot call to mind the burning anger that has for 7 years accompanied his presence. The presence of my enemy. With the hard lines of his cold features smoothed in to innocence, I know that the stability of my hatred has charred to ash and dust and now I am floating, adrift in space. We may stand on opposing battlefields, still pawns in someone else’s game, but what if I have lost the will to win? The will to fight? Together, we have burnt our sure, suspicious relationship to the ground and the damage cannot be fixed.  
Still, who am I to place blame? It was me that blew one simple idea, a spark, in to a raging, scorching flame. That in one simple kiss obliterated everything and for no reason other than that I wanted to. But worse, even as the gloom of destruction weighs heavily in my mind, a wave of new thought is building- unfamiliar, unexplored, dangerous and yet everything is new and thrilling; I never could say no to an adventure.  
Still, I prefer not to think.  
Carefully, I extract myself from the pile of limbs that we have created and stagger from the room before Baz has time to wake, before I have time to think.  
Everything seems odd today. The sunlight too bright, scalding my watery eyes. Everyone is too loud and there are so many people. Penny is for once not a release or distraction but too curious; drawing attention to things that I cannot think about, let alone tell her about. Automatically, my eyes scan the crowds but the one person I always search for is not detectable and I don’t think about the disappointment that this realisation brings. Slowly, I struggle through the day- lesson after lesson endured as I refuse think, refuse to acknowledge the writhing mess of emotion burning inside my stomach.  
Maybe it’s time to think.  
  
**Baz**

Snow is gone when I wake up, leaving only the lingering scent of flames on my clothes and the ghost of his hand tracing my jaw to show that, whatever may have happened, it was not another far-fetched daydream. I know that this spark of hope that he has blown in to a flame is destined to burn me alive, but I can’t stop myself from aching for more. My head is pounding and my stomach squirming in deadly anticipation so I decide to stay locked in the room for the day and avoid lessons, distractions, but mostly a certain golden haired boy.  
Overwhelmed. Everything that has happened in the space of just a few short days has left me drowning and unable to catch a breath. Between trying to figure out just what the hell is happening and being cornered by Snow I haven’t had a single chance to sort through what I am feeling and, quite frankly, I have no fucking clue as to what Snow thinks he is doing. (Not that I do either).  
But even though these brief, mind-spinning encounters are more than I ever could have hoped for, they are still pushing me further and further towards breaking point because now that Snow has set a precedent, allowed a small flicker of hope that maybe, one day my feelings could be reciprocated, I know that I am bound to be disappointed and heart-broken worse than all these past years combined. Luckily for me, he isn’t as stupid as I make him out to be, he did walk out today after all. All throughout these past, torturous years I have struggled against my feelings, trying my best to break free of their restraints, beat them into nothingness but I’ve been looking at it the wrong way. Instead of fighting against him, I should’ve protected myself. Instead of plotting ways to be rid of him, I should’ve gotten out while I still could. Yet how could I have predicted this? Something so close to what I have always wanted yet still so far. Every gentle caress pulling me farther in, losing myself in him, allowing me to keep up the pretence just a little longer. And now I can’t seem to let go.  
But every time it is so good and even though I know it does me no good, I cannot refuse him and his azure eyes and his halo of curls. Sometimes I think it would have been better if I had never met Snow, never lost my sense and my heart to the boy with responsibilities bigger than himself, but now I am almost glad to have loved him, glad that he has cracked my icy shell just a little and I have given everything I have to a few exhilarating moments. Without him, my life would be nothing but a wallow of despair and self-hatred but knowing that he is alive and he is well and he is powerful enough to defeat anything that can challenge him has made me worth something. It is better to have loved and lost than to feel nothing, and I have lost more than most.  
Because amongst everything that I hope, dream and think is the irrefutable knowledge that what we have cannot continue; love is wanting the best for someone, no matter the personal loss and the only thing that I know with any lucidity is that I am not good for Simon Snow, and now he’s gone anyway.


	11. Chapter 11

**Baz**

Snow is gone when I wake up, leaving only the lingering scent of flames on my clothes and the ghost of his hand tracing my jaw to show that, whatever may have happened, it was not another far-fetched daydream. I know that this spark of hope that he has blown in to a flame is destined to burn me alive, but I can’t stop myself from aching for more. My head is pounding and my stomach squirming in deadly anticipation so I decide to stay locked in the room for the day and avoid lessons, distractions, but mostly a certain golden haired boy.  
Overwhelmed. Everything that has happened in the space of just a few short days has left me drowning and unable to catch a breath. Between trying to figure out just what the hell is happening and being cornered by Snow I haven’t had a single chance to sort through what I am feeling and, quite frankly, I have no fucking clue as to what Snow thinks he is doing. (Not that I do either).  
But even though these brief, mind-spinning encounters are more than I ever could have hoped for, they are still pushing me further and further towards breaking point because now that Snow has set a precedent, allowed a small flicker of hope that maybe, one day my feelings could be reciprocated, I know that I am bound to be disappointed and heart-broken worse than all these past years combined. Luckily for me, he isn’t as stupid as I make him out to be, he did walk out today after all. All throughout these past, torturous years I have struggled against my feelings, trying my best to break free of their restraints, beat them into nothingness but I’ve been looking at it the wrong way. Instead of fighting against him, I should’ve protected myself. Instead of plotting ways to be rid of him, I should’ve gotten out while I still could. Yet how could I have predicted this? Something so close to what I have always wanted yet still so far. Every gentle caress pulling me farther in, losing myself in him, allowing me to keep up the pretence just a little longer. And now I can’t seem to let go.  
But every time it is so good and even though I know it does me no good, I cannot refuse him and his azure eyes and his halo of curls. Sometimes I think it would have been better if I had never met Snow, never lost my sense and my heart to the boy with responsibilities bigger than himself, but now I am almost glad to have loved him, glad that he has cracked my icy shell just a little and I have given everything I have to a few exhilarating moments. Without him, my life would be nothing but a wallow of despair and self-hatred but knowing that he is alive and he is well and he is powerful enough to defeat anything that can challenge him has made me worth something. It is better to have loved and lost than to feel nothing, and I have lost more than most.  
Because amongst everything that I hope, dream and think is the irrefutable knowledge that what we have cannot continue; love is wanting the best for someone, no matter the personal loss and the only thing that I know with any lucidity is that I am not good for Simon Snow, and now he’s gone anyway.  
  
**Simon**

Clarity is harder to reach than it sounds, especially when there are things that I cannot bare to consider, let alone admit to myself. The one thing that is clear is the hunger. The burning want, desire that I have never experienced so painfully obviously before. I am no stranger to want, no stranger to pushing the things I want to the back of my mind to stop myself from drowning in the absence of things I can never have, but nothing; not the futile want for affection and love of any kind, not the pointless longing for someone- hell, anyone to see beyond the expectations, not the vain craving for the perfect life that almost seems like a reality with Agatha, has ever submerged me like this.  
I cannot deny this yearning for scorching touch, kisses that melt my whole body that I have never experienced before. When I touch Baz there is no absence as there was with Agatha. The emotions and the sensations are almost too much. And Agatha never kissed me like that. Like kissing was something thrilling.  
But that’s the other thing I have to consider; Agatha. My future. Our future. A faultless future, a better future than I ever hoped for growing up in a care home, where I am special and I take home the beautiful princess at the end of the story- not the prince of darkness, the villain. And that is where all considerations cease, where I cannot continue my train of thought as I do not know where it might lead because when did Baz shift from enemy to friend? To more than friend? There has only ever been two options, only one of us making it out alive.  
And this is the only time I have ever thought, maybe I don’t want it to be me.


	12. Chapter 12

**Simon**

Days have been drifting slowly by without incident, mainly because Baz has been suddenly avoiding me. You'd think that this would be a difficult feat considering we share a room but somehow he's still been managing it. Maybe it's good that I've had a break from him, a break from all the overwhelming, elemental feelings that drown and burn me all at once when we're together, when I can feel him on my skin. But now with revelations and all, Baz's absence seems tangible like a gap in the universe. I am so distracted that it is quite a miracle that nothing seems to have blown up, excepting of course Penny’s curiosity which appears to have magnified a hundred-fold over night. But despite her careful scrutiny and unmatched intelligence, it seems that anything connecting me and Baz other than mutual hatred and aggression is not considerable, even for her. And so, although she gives up her half-hearted attempt at ignoring my increasingly sour mood, she gives in only to cautiously worded questions regarding Agatha and the breakup I keep forgetting to mourn. Instead of sweetness and light, my mind is concerned only with fire and ice. With battling natures and intensity. With sculpted cheekbones and carved tendons. With the single thought that I can’t quite stop myself from thinking. That I can’t quite allow myself to think. The thought that ties everything together and will at last bring illogical reason to everything.  
Instead I focus on Penny’s questions and grasping on to the lingering strands of disappointment that accompanied my last talk with Agatha and the faint hope I can somehow derive from the longing looks she is beginning to send my way again, trying to convince myself that she is still the only one I want. That fate is still the only thing I believe in. And so, I smile gently, encouragingly back at her, even though the usually uplifting sight of her building hope seems to be dousing me with icy water.  
Penny eyes me closely yet again at lunch, but doesn’t give into interrogation (at least not this time) and I busy myself with stuffing my face as usual to try and ignore the fact that her razor gaze is slicing me in half.  
“I think it’s good.” she says suddenly and switches her attention towards her plate of food as I turn towards her, but she doesn’t elaborate.  
“Um...What’s good?” I choke through yet another scone.  
“You know, Agatha’s gone and it’s just back to you and me”- she bumps me with her shoulder- “Like old times- no drama.”  
“No drama! But before Agatha we spent all our time dodging the Humdrum, solving mysteries and following Baz around.”  
She rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean, no Agatha drama”  
I chuckle “Yeah I guess you’re right, Agatha does kinda make everything into a big deal.”  
“Exactly.” She says smugly. She acts like she never liked Agatha, but I think it’s just the fact that everything does seems to revolve around her and me and us when she’s around- like we don’t have other stuff to deal with.  
“You know, I was thinking, things have been relatively quiet this term- especially on the Baz front...”  
I look at her. She’s busy sipping her tea and I don’t think she seems suspicious.  
I shrug. “He’s still a git but I guess I’m learning to tolerate him.”  
Penny laughs “About time!”  
I manage to crack a small smile and swiftly change the subject, feeling relief blossom in my chest when Penny goes along with it, and then something else unfurl when I see Agatha walking briskly towards us.  
I stare down at my plate while Penny greets her casually and maybe a little coolly but I can still feel her watching me closely, wanting me to stare back. So long for no Agatha drama.  
I only look up when she addresses me directly and it takes everything I have to smile warmly up at her as she slides onto the bench between me and Penny but I’m confused. Since when has it been so hard to smile at Agatha? Just the sight of her milky white hair and doll eyes used to make me want to grab hold of her and never let go.  
“So Simon, isn’t it time we talked?”  
I can see the nerves in her wide-eyed open expression, hope and confidence melting into uncertainty when I hesitate. But then I remember- this is Agatha, this is what we do, this is how it is meant to be.  
Although the thought doesn’t fill me completely with reassurance like it usually does, it’s enough and I blurt out a “yes” before I can change my mind and her eyes finally soften when I nod my head vigorously, although the fervour drains away as she grins and turns to start talking animatedly at Penny, who looks less than enthused.  
And then I smile, relief flooding through me. Everything is back to normal, the way it should be. Me and Agatha together again, soon enough. Penny rolling her eyes fondly at her, a polished future carved in marble.  
And Baz. I look over at him across the hall and our eyes meet. I can almost see myself reflected in the glassy mirror of his irises and time slows for an instant, all my hesitation and doubt flooding back along with the want and passion and _ache_. Since when has this tide of emotion, not remotely to do with hatred been there? Since when has his presence been tied to every state of mind and every decision I make? Since when have I been in lo—  
Agatha nudges me with her elbow.  
I feel hot all over, like liquid fire is running through my veins, heat pulsing through my every fibre.  
“Are you ok?” she asks, confused.  
His eyes are dark, not with venom but icy hunger and desire and I feel my own dilated pupils mirroring his.  
“What’s wrong?”  
A heart beat thunders past and I am lost in the electrifying, exhilarating dark.  
“Simon!”  
I blink and turn away.  
“Agatha?”


	13. Chapter 13

**Baz**

Stinging. Dull. Bearable. Snow’s not quite hidden delight is visible, even from the other side of the hall, and who could blame him? Who would settle for the bad guy when they can have the princess? But even that isn’t really fair because there never was a choice to make. I wasn’t anything to him but a release, a body, never a conceivable option. He is straight after all. But Wellbelove, well she’s the girl of his dreams. She’s everything he’s ever wanted- love, family, life whereas I have always represented the opposite.   
Hatred. Anger. Death.  
I couldn’t have kept it up anyway; avoiding him, pretending that I wasn’t a mess of emotion through and through, keeping it rough and biting, stopping my feelings from seeping through, although I failed at that every time. No one else understands what it’s like between us, how hard it is; not Dev or Niall or even smart Penelope Bunce. To be so close to Snow yet so far away. To be loathed so greatly but bound to him all the time- the intensity so strong that his hatred crushes everything else into a background blur and his opposition is the only thing you have left to compare yourself and anyone else to. Until his very existence is the only way you are able to define yourself. Until he is the only thing you have left to weigh everyone up to and the reason for every decision.  
Until it feels like every breath is for him.  
After all, there is always a hero to take down every rogue, and a villain to challenge every lead. But he is so strong, and he is and has been so much more than his role and every stereotype that I have assigned him, so much life, splendour, soul and he will beat me, I’ve always known that, but I never realised how much it’s going to hurt.  
I start the slow walk back to Mummer’s house, lost in thought and drifting pretence. I have never been afraid of death. Some would say that this is because I have met my demise already, but I see my state more as existing just a step closer to expiry than the average person. One foot in the world of living, one edging into hell. And so, this unrelenting tide of emotion and fear and hurt is not of dying, although I wish I had the luxury to fear demise, but of afterwards. Of Simon carrying on without me, and how easily he will continue to exist.  
I lie motionless, hand draped gently over my eyes, legs propped up on the bed, feeling all together way too tired to try to avoid him. I always knew that this was coming, ever since he kissed me that first time so why does it feel like a tidal wave of needless disappointment is flooding my every nerve? I don’t know, but what I do know is that this is all my fault. I shouldn’t have let him get to me. Shouldn’t have let the façade slip even a little because now I have the sound of Simon moaning, the vision of his eyelashes fluttering inches from my face forever imprinted on the backs of my eyelids and nothing will ever compare.  
I hear the door knob quietly turning and let out an exasperated sigh, it sucks being roommates with the boy you can never have. I don’t move or open my eyes as he enters, not wanting to have to interact while feeling this volatile but, oblivious as always, he comes over and sits down beside me. I sigh again.  
“Baz.”  
“Yes, Snow?”  
“Well, I just thought that you should know…” He trails off nervously. It’s not like him to have nothing to say.  
“You thought I should know what? That you’re back together with Agatha? Tell me again why I should care.” I can’t help the trace of bitterness seeping into my voice, but it doesn’t matter now anyway. The final flicker of hope for happiness died in my dark, dark soul this morning and I have nothing left to lose.  
“Er well I thought maybe we should talk about it?” He sounds so exceedingly unsure of himself that I sit up and look at him, feeling masochistically amused.  
“Us? Talk?” I bark out a short laugh without a drop of humour “Since when have we ever talked other than to exchange insults?”  
He looks at me incredulously and slowly shakes his head in disbelief.  
“Baz, we’ve done a lot more than talk recently.”  
I don’t even bother to respond to that but my heart starts to pump faster and my blood begins to freeze.  
“I don’t hate you, Baz. I don’t know if I ever really have.” He leans forward so that his eyes are inches from mine, his pupils darting back and forth restlessly and I can hardly breathe but I smirk anyway and cross my arms.  
“I think seven years of fights and hexes would say otherwise.” I say and he practically rolls his eyes.  
“I knew you would close off like this, but tell me that last night meant nothing to you. Tell me that you didn’t feel anything. Tell me that I don’t mean anything.”  
Oh Simon, how could I tell you that, how could anyone tell you that when you have painted my whole grey world in to vibrancy. My head hits the wall with a thump and I close my eyes, at a complete loss for words. I wish I could tell him how I feel and have him not walk away. I wish I could tell him how I feel and beat him to a bloody pulp afterwards. I wish I could tell him and have him do absolutely anything but give me that stinging look of pity. I can't figure out what he wants from me, what does he expect? He has his heart's desire back again- what more does he need me for? I am, and always will be, first and foremost a Pitch and Pitches are weak for nobody. I’ve already broken just about every rule of honour our family upholds but this one I will keep because I need some kind of protection after all. I was right all those years ago- the Humdrum will not be my end, nor a chimera or even the bloody Mage, but him.  
So I swallow the fire, exhaling slowly and then I open my eyes and look deep into Simon’s, full of concern and hope and… longing? I shake my head slightly to clear it and lean back against the wall, completely drained.  
“Just leave me alone Snow.” My voice is full of weary fatigue.  
He exhales sharply, evidently annoyed by my non-answer.  
“Baz..”  
“No, just go away.”  
“But-“  
“No.”  
“Please?”  
“Simon, go away.”  
When I slowly open my eyes he is walking out the door, shoulders drooping and probably dejected that someone finally resisted his charms. He wants Agatha, and now it seems she wants him back. She’ll leave him again, but she’ll always return, I know this because I have observed it time and time again. She is a bird; uncaged yet tethered by the illusion of freedom and by now I’ve learnt, oh God have I learnt, that ignorance is bliss.   
Although maybe this is what I wanted all along, to watch and wail. To wait forever.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short chapter, but I didn't want to post the next part at the same time. Thanks for the comments guys they make me so happy!!

**Simon**

Why do I feel empty? Why does it feel like something impossibly heavy is weighing me down? Why do I feel like somethings aren’t worth sacrificing? I’m tired of whys- choking on them but they have ensnared me in a web of unanswered questions nevertheless. I’m currently strolling the grounds with Agatha, and somehow, trying to pay attention to her endless stories of pageants and dressage and events is proving to be extremely difficult. I’ve never found it hard to listen to her before- that soft lilting voice has always entranced me just like everyone else. Until it didn’t. I look at her and am unsurprised. She is, of course, beautiful, perfect. But now unease is ringing in my ears and I don’t think about it because it will bring everything I believe in crashing down.  
But if I don’t think, I'm going to burn anyway.  
I have always thought that happiness would be easy to find, provided I survived long enough to search for it, but now it suddenly seems far out of grasp, stretched miles from where it used to rest, teasingly just out of finger reach. I am seared and drowned and made of glass and if I break, I am going to make everyone else shatter with me. But I am already, slowly, exploding piece by piece into shards of crystal and even Agatha’s impeccable corn silk hair, her flawless diamond eyes, her perfect sing-song voice cannot hold me together.  
What if the world isn’t supposed to be perfect?  
My mind starts to drift. When did everything start to circle around him? Well, maybe the answer to that is obvious. Everything I did become irrevocably dependant on him the instant his demon smirk made my heart begin to race in frustration. From the first sharp insult drawn slowly from lazy lips. From the moment I felt the pull of the crucible from deep in my gut drawing me towards him and the knowledge that no matter how untimely, how infuriating, however much I tried to change it, that this bond could not be undone or matched by anyone else. Maybe I do still believe in fate and destiny and Agatha, but the only thing I truly know is that that’s not what I want anymore. I know that a single chance at whatever this is with Baz, is better than years and a future and a lifetime of chances with her or anyone else.  
I halt mid-step and Agatha stops too, turning to look at me with wide blue eyes that I can’t quite seem to meet.  
“Simon?”  
“I-I-I’m-”  
“What’s wrong?”  
“I’m sorry” I whisper, a million undeserved apologies and goodbyes spinning through my mind.  
“Sorry for?”  
And all of a suddenly I am breaking down every slowly crumbling barricade and everything I haven't allowed myself to think is flooding through my mind, submerging every fibre. I'm sorry for you, Agatha, I think. I'm sorry for wasted years and bruises. I’m sorry for judgements and labels and indecisiveness. For not knowing what I want, for not talking sooner, for misplaced hate, for confusion. I’m sorry that I didn’t know I loved him.  
“I’m sorry” I simply say again, turning on one heel and then sprinting away.  
Glancing backwards, I see Agatha standing still and alone at the top of the hill, the wind blowing curls through her hair, the sun setting her silhouette ablaze but I don’t go back as I might once have, instead turning back around and continuing towards the dorms. Now that I have chosen this rocky, perilous path it may be too late to turn back and I have veered completely off of fate’s stable road, instead heading towards mountains called rejection and uncertainty and hope and desire and darkness but I don’t feel afraid, all I feel is alive.  
 _Simon_ I think. He called me _Simon_.


	15. Chapter 15

**Baz**

My eyes burn and blood drips slowly from my clenched fingers as I try my damnest to blink away this never-ceasing pain. Screw it. I grab another rat by the tail and watch it swing slowly like a pendulum, trying to forget, hoping to remember. I’ve fed more than enough already and have homework upstairs waiting to be tackled, but homework comes with thinking and dorm rooms and roommates and- well let’s not go there. I slump against the wall with a dull thud. I’ve come here, to the catacombs, enough times in the past seven years to be used to the dark and damp and mould but recently I’ve been exposed to too much of its juxtaposition and now sitting down here feels like I am being drowned and leeched of colour. But even that’s better than the alternative.  
Burning alive.  
I squeeze my eyes tightly shut, but I can’t escape him even now. I should’ve listened when every fibre of my being told me that it was too good to be true. I should’ve known that beautiful things can only be seen from afar. But I’ve always been a fool.  
I was wrong, I’m not glad to have loved him, let him see beneath my brittle façade even a little, because now it’s slipping and I don’t know if I will be able to hold myself together for much longer.  
I don’t know how long I stay here, leaning against the stone wall, letting its cold numb me and bleed into my very soul but soon I hear light footsteps, pounding shallowly against the paved flagstones above my head and tense. No one has ever seen me down here before, no one has guessed or had a reason to visit the rat infested catacombs. But there’s nowhere to hide, and blood is still clotted beneath my fingernails and staining my teeth- I see dull light approaching and every shadow flees traitorously before me. Whoever it is will kill me when they find me but death will be a relief, I tell myself, and it seems I have nothing left to live for.  
“Baz?”  
I almost laugh out loud at the ridiculousness of the situation. Snow will finally have his evidence for the Mage to declare me a vampire and prove that he really is the golden child after all. Death by his hand has always been expected. A fleeting smile shadows my lips. Entirely fitting, I think.  
“Baz.” His voice is filled with relief and uncertainty and my eyes slide slowly open.  
“Snow.” I respond.  
“I’ve been looking for you” he smiles hesitantly and my brow creases, having thought he was too filled with morality and light to smile at the pinnacle of my destruction, but then again I have underestimated him before.  
“And why would that be?” I ask, a mask of cool composure even if I can’t find it in me to accompany my words with the usual sneering ferocity. Still, better than I expected to manage.  
His face falls dramatically at my scathing tone but his eyes are filled with grim determination and his mouth holds at the corners, with what? Hope? I give up trying to understand his infuriating psychology.  
“I-I-“  
“Just spit it out, Snow.”  
He sighs inaudibly but I see the desperate motion of his lips through the dim light nevertheless.  
“You called me Simon before.”  
I snap awake at that, whatever I expected he came here to tell me, it wasn’t that. I backtrack to our earlier conversation and remember the slip. Is that why he’s here? Looking for answers? If so, he’ll be sorely disappointed.  
“Did I? My apologies, it won’t happen again.”  
His face falls even further as I shoulder my way past him, hating the flicker of current that passes through me as our arms brush, hating the ripple of unease that breaks across my face, cracking the fascia.  
“Baz…”  
I shatter. I turn back to him, feeling the anguish roaring in my eyes, choking my throat and he stares at me. Shocked, fading blue seared by burning grey. I can’t stop myself. I feel myself falling through crystalline lakes and drowning in blue tears. Stabbed by shards of curving lip and white teeth. I am lost, a heartbeat thundering past before I am alive again. Before I am scorched again.  
“WHAT?” I snarl, pouring every bit of suffering and heartbreak and doubt and hope and loss in to that one word, making it more accusation than question because I see it now: the elation and hope shining in his eyes, dulled to muted whispers of gleaming liquidation, reflecting shadows and darkness and me. He came looking for me, and he found me. But I don’t deserve him and it takes every bit of juxtaposing self-preservation and selflessness in my black heart to remember that. But I do.  
“Tell me you feel nothing.”  
I rip my gaze from his and look towards the dusty floor.  
“Baz, look me in the eye and tell me I mean nothing.”  
His earlier words thrown back at me again; insufferable git. An insufferable git that drives me to insanity with want and arousal and love. Even hope, something I had lost forever until he filled my drifting days with meaning. But I will never make him happy. I stare at the floor, I stare hard, counting the dust motes, watching insects scurry through Snow’s grey lamp light and I feel the tide go out. I feel the anger, resentment, bitterness leave me. I feel my shoulders droop into despondence and cold, punishing acceptance. All he means is regret. I exhale deeply and I try my best to believe it. I am nothing.  
I look up into his luminous eyes, glowing sea-tinged silver in the leaden light and find I can only murmur.  
“Nothing.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Simon**

I barely hear his retreating footsteps, hope and even desperation fleeing their reside deep within me. I have always been hot, soul burning brightly beneath my skin, making my surface ripple with magic and life and always, always, always in the darkest of hours: hope. But now I am cold.  
Shadows swirl mockingly in his wake, scattering when the lamp I brought to scare them away sputters and goes out. I don’t relight it- I feel compassion for the darkness now. A black void has opened up inside of me and it’s sucking everything in. I stumble, reaching one hand out to the wall for support and breathing heavily, trying to reason with myself, anything to ease this pain.  
So I was wrong about him. It’s not the first time.  
Cold air curls around my throat, frosty fingers caressing my ebbing skin, drawing me further into this strange, unwelcoming place I have never visited before. Is this hell? It’s peculiar, feeling such an overpowering loss over something you never owned in the first place. Something that tormented you for seven years, mocking you, punching you, willing you to fail.  
So why does it feel so brutal?  
Because I belong to Baz. He has invaded my every nerve, every filament, curled his icy fingers around my every bone and I didn’t even notice. Until now. Until I lost him.  
It was me that started all of this, shattered every delicately balanced emotion and action all for the sake of desire, longing, hope for something more. And was it worth it?  
Well, maybe that's not the question I should be asking, and maybe I don’t deserve him after all. 


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait, my internet was down so I was unable to post. I hope you guys enjoy this chapter! Let me know what you think down in the comments, thank you all so much for reading. :)

**Penny**

  I guess it’s about time to admit that I’m worried. I mean, I always worry about Simon- he’s a complicated person and gets himself in a lot of dangerous situations after all. But this year, I’ve been more worried than usual. The past couple of weeks he’s been acting positively bipolar- one minute elated and he won’t stop talking, the next full of confusion and hurt and… guilt? At first I blamed the break up with Agatha, but it’s not like this is the first time it’s happened and he’s never been this strange about it before- usually Agatha lets him sulk for a few days before she makes up with him but this time it’s taken weeks, almost _months_ and I guess I can’t blame Agatha more than usual because Simon hasn’t been upset at all after the first day or so. I can read his face like an open book, and even when he’s unhappy these days he’s more angry than sad and he’s _never_ angry with Agatha.

  I sigh. I guess the worst and most confusing part is that he hasn’t told me anything. I hate being the kind of person that doesn’t let others have their privacy so I haven’t pushed him much but since when have we been keeping secrets from each other? He should know that I wouldn’t judge him for the way he feels so why is he trying (and failing) to hide it from me. I snap shut the library book I had been reading and rest my chin on my hand. Well, whatever it is, it probably doesn’t matter anymore what with him and Agatha being back together and all.  It’s not that I mind their relationship, although constantly third-wheeling is a bit of a bore, but they just don’t suit each other. Agatha is never happy and he can never keep up with her and so they both end up miserable. Then there’s also the small fact that she keeps ditching him to flirt with other guys, knowing that he’ll take her back every time. She’s not a bad person but she is a bad girlfriend and somehow Simon can’t see that. My mind spins like it always does when there’s a problem I can’t figure out. The truth is, I haven’t been able to study Simon as much as I usually do with him staying in his room more and more the past few weeks. This is weird in itself because he generally can’t wait to get away from Baz. I freeze and everything starts to come together. Memories suddenly start to flick through my head like shadows, falling rapidly in to place like pieces in a puzzle. I rise abruptly, scraping my chair across the floor and everyone studying in the library turns to stare at me with hard eyes but I don’t care. I walk as fast as dare out of the door and race across the lawn to Mummer’s house, painfully aware that I should have noticed something sooner; when they shot each other those frighteningly intense looks without shooting a single insult. When Baz made those cryptically vague comments after Simon pushed him, somehow laced with hidden meaning and emotion. When Simon was more distracted than ever before and didn’t give a damn about the girl he supposedly loves.

  I am heaving by the time I reach the staircase to Simon’s room but I don’t hesitate before sprinting up and I’m calling out his name before I have even knocked. There is no reply but the door swings open at the lightest touch of my finger as I try to catch my breath.

  “Simon” I pant but there is still no reply. I step cautiously into the room and say his name again, a little louder. His bed, just below the window, is empty, the darkening sky is filtering shadows across his pillow, a sliver of moon only just visible in the bottom corner beginning its slow reign over the night.

  “He’s not here.” A cool voice speaks from behind the door and I see Baz appear out from the bathroom. He looks calm and composed as ever but damn if I’m not observant and I can hear the fissures running through his voice even from those three words, like cracks spider webbing through him. I look at him, my heart slowing and his eyes are large and pale, his skin grey and sickly through the dark.

  “What’s going on, Baz?” I breathe and his eyebrows raise ever higher at my hushed tones. Emotions flit like evening shadows across his face; anguish and loss and defeat proving everything I have guessed correct before they disappear behind his cold, hard mask. He says nothing in reply, regarding me impassively from behind clear, grey eyes; the colour an emotionless mask in itself, the shade of gravestone.

  “What’s going on?” I ask again, as he slowly crosses the room and sits leisurely on his bed, knowing he won’t give anything away but desperate to ask anyway.

  His lips from a soft “o” as he exhales quickly and suddenly gazes back up at me again, his eyes suddenly roaring in wild, primal pain, his fingers quivering. The naked admission of pain stuns me like a blow to the stomach and I stagger backwards, words I might have said choking in my throat, lost to the wind before they could reach my tongue. He is as I have never seen him before: no longer an untouchable statue but a wounded animal, bleeding out his life to the starless night. I blink and look back at him and his face is the same- broken beyond repair and my heart rumbles before I take three paces and am out of the door hearing a soft choke of “the catacombs” whispered behind me, quiet as a butterfly wing. I stumble all the way back down the stairs and towards the catacombs. I have never been down there, even when Simon tried to coerce me to go with him to look for Baz. Too afraid of the dark and the damp, but the whole world is black without my light, my best friend. I take a deep breath and take my first step downwards, moisture settling around me and beading on my hair.

  The wind whistles gently behind me and drops of ice cling to the ground, awaiting the fall of dusk.  


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, it's been a while but I'm back with a short new chapter and more coming.. if you guys want it!  
> Thanks for reading :)
> 
> Inspired by the most wonderful Rhysenn

**Penny**

The wind streaks through grass and leaf, whirling a thousand autumn colours through the air, weighed down with questions, unspoken answers and emotion yet to feel the rush of sunlight. Simon sits beside me, against the tree, my favourite spot in the whole school. We don’t speak but the tension between us is strung with sorrowful remembrance, remembrance of things that for once I share no part in. I gaze across the silent lawn, starting to grow unruly this time of year and sigh, but I don’t say anything.

  “Do you believe in divine intervention Penny?” He asks, his tone the hushed echoes of water rolling over stone.

  “You mean like God?” I ask and he laughs a little and the movement reverberates through him. I stare through the branches high above me, where the leaves are starting to turn brown and orange, dying like the colours of a faded sunset. I’ve always loved autumn, there’s a heavy, balanced sentiment in the season of death. Just as all things begin, all must return to ashes.

  “God? Yeah, I guess. So do you?”

  I glance at him but his eyes are removed, pale stones resting somewhere distant.

  “No, you know I’m not religious. Few magicians are.”

  He frowns. “Fate, then.”

  I pause for a moment, considering. “I believe that… our choices are now, not predetermined. What do you believe?”

  He slowly shakes his head, as if clearing it of ghosts.

  “I don’t know.” He murmurs. “I… can’t stop myself from thinking that this story was already written. A long time ago.”

  He pauses, and the only sound is gentle worry rumbling in my ears. When he speaks again it is only a whisper.

  “Written in the stars on a very dark night.”

  I gaze at him, unhappiness welling up deep in my stomach, burning against my irises. We don’t talk for a while, just stare at the clouds until I gather my wits and gently form the right words. Syllables floating from my tongue, articulated on the back of butterflies.

  “Some things don’t happen for a reason, they just do and… there’s no use searching for an answer or explanation because there is none.”

  His lips quirk, but with humourless amusement.

  “So, I should stop trying to figure out why I’m the one that ended things yet still the one that can’t let go?”

  “Simon…” My fingers brush his arm but he doesn’t move, doesn’t respond.   

I stare up at the school, the towering turrets and red brick walls making up the only place that Simon has ever felt like home. The high ceilings and elegant chandeliers have always seemed too imposing to be comforting to me, but he loves it. I glance back at him. But not me. My true home has only ever been right beside him. His curls are tangled as usual and matted, bark tracing patterns over the back of his neck. I allow a small smile to shadow my lips. I remember meeting a small boy with a red rubber ball and a smile too big for his face in this very spot once.

  Once.

  I sit up and square my shoulders in grim determination.

  “Whether you and Baz were meant to be or not, there are two things that I know for certain.”

  He looks at me sardonically, grave and unsmiling.

  “First, that this ‘story’ or whatever you want to call it is not finished yet. The book is still open and unwritten.”

  I take a deep breath. “Second, I know that you’re not the only one that hasn’t let go yet.”

  His eyes widen in confusion and then in realisation.

  “He said he felt nothing, Penny.” My heart rumbles at the resigned look in his clear eyes.

  “No, he just said the word ‘nothing’, not that that’s how he feels.” I stand up and squeeze his shoulder. “Just think about it.”

  I walk away slowly.

 

**Baz**

I lie on my bed, staring at the ceiling once again, the fragile veneer of my mask finally cracked beyond repair. It had been a mistake. All of it. Returning this year even though my father advised against it. Taunting Simon as usual and not staying the hell away from him. And most of all, letting him get to me at all.

  But it’s too late for regrets.

  I made it unmistakeably clear to Simon that I too could shatter any beautiful illusion that he had conjured, and just as quickly. I made it unmistakeably clear that it’s over. Maybe it’s time to start convincing myself.

  I study the cracks against the ceiling, hollowness swallowing up the space where fear and hope had once been, like when reality breaks through the surface of a dream and drags you screaming and spluttering with it. Reality. That’s where I have returned to.

  My reality has always been difficult, losing my mother, losing all hope and even losing any chance for a normal life, yet it has still never seemed this cruel.

  I did everything I could to push Simon away and now I’m trapped in a cage of my own creation. I sit up and hug my knees. Maybe it’s finally time to give up.


	19. Chapter 19

**Simon**

  Days spill like liquid ink, spreading slowly into weeks and all is as it once was. Every day is a repetition, a rehearsal and everything slowly builds up into what it used to be, what it still _is_ I remind myself. Get up in time for breakfast. Wolf down as many scones as can be digested without being physically sick while Penny talks about things I don’t understand. Get through lessons without making things explode. Play football some nights, study with Penny others, shower while the room is still empty. Fall asleep before it isn’t.

  The month or so of excitement has come full circle and it’s a revelation to realise that the seemingly earth-shattering events happening in my life have caused barely a ripple in the rest of the world. Oh, except for the fact that Agatha has now moved permanently to another seat in the hall. And I’m no longer invited to her house for Christmas.

  Everything changes. Everything stays the same.

  I unstick my eyelids slowly, the first glimpses of sun beginning to break through my eyelids into the dark tunnels of my dreams. I freeze and lie still when I hear footsteps padding across the floor and sigh when the bathroom door clicks shut. I sit up and rub my forehead, pushing lingering dark thoughts from my mind and dress quickly. I check my reflection in the mirror- I look the same as always, my eyes a little more shadowed maybe, from lack of sleep but my hair is unruly as always. I half-heartedly run my fingers through it and make a hasty exit when I hear the water turning on in the bathroom.

  Penny barely glances up when I sit down but pours me a cup of tea as I slide up beside her.

  “You okay?” she asks lazily and I just grunt in response as usual.

  It took a few days for her worry to seep away and now even she seems to have let things slide back into the easy routine they used to be, minus of course one sunlight-haired girl. One smart-mouthed vampire.

  I struggle to keep my gaze trained on my plate and not the figure currently sweeping through the heavy hall doors. Our interaction has ceased completely, even to keep up appearances and I can’t help the feeling of _wrongness_ that underlies the way everything has so easily return to _right,_ if not quite normal. Sometimes I catch one of his minions shoot him confused looks when he makes it through a whole lesson of me screwing up without making a single mocking comment or jeering smirk.

  But that’s how I know it’s there. Hidden under everything, locked away beneath the ice-thin but oh so rigid veil covering me and him and Penny and everyone, bringing semblance of resolution, a question asked and answered. An underlying _something_ that, together, we opened and passed between us and tried.

  And failed.

  And life continues on, the emotions and words and actions that we jumbled up for such a short eternity have been slotted back once again into their allotted places, borrowed time returned, nature once again in synchrony with fate’s design.

  I laugh under my breath. Fate? Yeah right. Because somehow, even now I’m through blaming destiny for my choices, I can’t shake the feeling that it’s still here, tugging me forwards but in what direction I will never know. Sometimes I think I’m ready to push back onto the path I set upon originally. Towards the humdrum and victory and happiness. Supposed happiness, anyway. I risk a glance at Agatha, at the way she sits surrounded by admirers but somehow still alone, at the melancholy hidden in her easy smile but evident to me in the despondency lurking behind the crystal glint of her eyes and the tension seizing in her shoulders. Maybe I can erase the strain in her jaw, return to the easy laughter we used to share, even if it means resigning myself to finally letting go of the maybes and what ifs that still haunt my unconsciousness.

  But then I feel the ghost of slender fingers grasping in my hair and I remember the absolute exhilaration of being alive, being me with none of the expectations clinging to my back and everything shatters again. Because he didn’t have any expectations and then the air is solidifying and crumbling inside my lungs and I’m choking and I don’t give a shit about fate because all I need to live, to _be_ is so obviously right in front of me and I’m dying without it and only one person can save me and I could breathe if only he’d let me inhale the carbon dioxide he breathes out and-

  Penny looks down at me curiously. She’s standing up and besides us the hall is empty, silence filled only with the echoes of my heaving breath and the pounding of blood through my aching heart.

  “You coming to the lesson?” She asks, something vaguely resembling amusement tugging at her lips. I swallow quickly.

  “Yeah, I er didn’t hear the bell.” I cast my eyes down from her knowing look, since when did she become a damn mind reader?

  We get up and walk side by side, nothing but unspoken rigidity passing between us. And I refuse to meet her eyes.

  We reach the class.

  “Tell me everything’s okay” she says, grasping my chin and forcing me to look at her, the humour draining from her gaze.

  “Everything’s okay.” I say thickly, because everything is. Because so long as I can shake myself awake each morning and have her still beside me, still unquestioning, still making sure then I still have more than ever did before Watford. No matter that I’m not entirely sure that I can move on from Baz more than I can stop breathing or that things will ever be particularly _good_ again, but okay is more than bad. Okay is more than enough, so much more.

  I smile at her quickly and walk into the classroom where everyone else sits waiting. Penny follows and sits down beside me. Okay is having no one fill the empty seat on the other side of me, no one fill the hole left gaping in my heart, and no one is so much more that nothing. I finally let myself look at Baz, who looks right back with blank eyes. Not nothing yet.

 

  Surprisingly, I have still not been reduced to a pile of ash after our lesson on fire magic so, as me and Penny make our way to the football pitch at break time, I come to a few conclusions. First of all that this aversion between me and Penny and Agatha is extremely stupid and needs to be dispelled. Secondly that Penny was right a couple of weeks ago by the yew tree. Maybe our world is run by something greater like fate and maybe it isn’t but my choices still mean something, still matter _now_ and I can’t squander the limited time I have on this Earth. And third, well.

  Hope is a dangerous thing.

  I sit next to Penny on in the stands, too weary to join the players this time. I watch the game distantly, my eyes unfocussed, my mind drifting somewhere else. After a while I feel the hairs on the back of my neck prickle and know that Penny has dropped all pretence of interest in the game and is watching me instead. I don’t return her stare but sigh heavily when I hear a light, if strained giggle alerting me to Agatha’s presence a few feet away.

  “Simon, do you wa-“ Penny begins but I stand up and shake her off.

  “Just a minute, I need to do something..” I trail off as I start walking towards Agatha, feeling Penny still staring at me with big, worried eyes.

  Agatha’s watching the game with Gareth, although he doesn’t seem to have much interest in football so much as her but I don’t feel guilty about interrupting.

  “Agatha, can we talk?” I ask over their conversation and I can visibly see her effort not to look at me.

  “I’m actually talking to Gareth right now. Sorry.” She says, reluctance clear under her polite tone.

  “Gareth? Do you mind?” I say to him coldly and he shakes his head nervously before scampering off.

  “I’m sorry” I say, suddenly nervous and unsure how to begin repairing the fractured shards of our splintered friendship.

  Finally, she looks up and meets my eyes, accusation shining from hers as breeze spins through the air, spiralling her hair into golden streaks like sunlight. I hold her hand, relieved when she lets me.

  “I never should’ve let things get so messed up between us.” I murmur, trying to convey how sad I am at the way things turned out.

  She shakes her head slowly, her eyebrows drawing together.

  “It’s not your fault, Simon. It’s mine.”

  I try to interrupt but she holds up her other hand to stop me.

  “I was too selfish to be with you or break up or decide one way or another.” She pauses, the air between us strung with regret.

  “You were right to decide yourself and-” She takes a deep breath and looks down, breaking our eye contact. “And I support you moving on with someone else.”

  I tense, suddenly scared, is it really that obvious that something happened between me and Baz? But Agatha keeps speaking.

  “I think I always knew there was something more than friendship between you, she’s always been more compassionate than I have.” She looks back up at my slowly, echoes of tears shimmering like waves in her eyes and nothing more, no anger, no fury just acceptance.

  An amused sound escapes my throat, and then bubbles of laughter are flowing from my mouth because it’s funny that Penny was right this whole time- Agatha is _jealous_ and possibly I’m slightly hysterical that maybe our friendship isn’t irreparable after all. Agatha looks faintly offended by my out of place laughter.

  “Agatha. Me and Penny are friends. That’s it.” I smile, feeling lighter and relieved for the first time in weeks.

  Her brow creases “Really?”

  “Yes!”

  Her lips form a soft ‘o’ that slowly transforms into a smile- a real one this time and then she’s laughing too.

  “Wait, but you don’t want to get back together?” She says suddenly serious.

  “Er, I’m not sure that’s a good idea” I say cautiously, glancing at where Penny sits, resting her chin on her fist at the front of the stands. An involuntary intake of breath and I realise that Baz has joined the people playing football in front of us but I ignore him.

  “Yeah, I understand.” She smiles sheepishly “Friends?”

  I grin at her, for what feels like the first relaxed moment between us for a long, long time. No more expectations, no more failure, no more pretence, just friends.

  “Always.”

I quickly call Penny's name and she walks after with a half-hearted eye roll but even I can tell that she's happy to have Agatha back with us. I sling an arm around each of them as the humour and candor and happiness between us finally, _finally_ returns. I gaze out at the pitch as Agatha and Penny continue a conversation on around me but I can't drag my eyes away from the game, from Baz- effortless and stunning as always. I mentally shake my head at myself. Hope is a dangerous thing. A small smile shadows my lips. But who am I without it?


	20. Chapter 20

**Simon**

  I return to my room that afternoon with a plan. A rough, unsure, destined-to-fail-plan, but a plan nonetheless. I mentally shake my head- no destiny. Not anymore.

  The room is, of course, empty par mine and Baz’s unspoked agreement but my entire body is jittery and uncontrollably skittish as I undress and take a shower, trying not to let the anxiety in my heart seep through my veins. When I emerge from the bathroom, I sit stiffly on my bed and survey the room. This is where everything started, I think. Perhaps it’s fitting that it should be where it ends.

  _Or_ where it begins again. But, like I said, hope is a dangerous thing.

  The sun bleeds dying crimson before Baz returns, rays filtering like fire through the open window and burning across the floor. I sit there for what feels like hours as evening gives way to shadowy night, ethereal moon rising steadily in the sky and painting the walls silver.

  Finally, I hear the door handle twisting and my eyes flicker up from where they had been fixed on the floor. I take a deep breath and steel myself before the door swings open.

  He freezes in the doorway, face hollowed in shadows, paler than the evanescent moon and our eyes meet. I stare at him, into him, letting my gaze penetrate the thin veil that hides his eyes always. I look through, seeing the swirling void that still resides inside him. I was right. All along.

  “Baz…” I say, unsure how to continue but he remains still, fingers still gripping the door knob so tightly that his knuckles are turning white.

  I slowly rise from my bed, legs numb but unshaking beneath me. I step gently towards him, eyes never leaving his shuttered gaze. As I draw closer, I utter his name again, letting sentiment colour my voice and the simple word emerges as a croak. I come to a stop only when our bodies our mere centimetres apart, hairs rising along my arms, the back of my neck, so close his breath ghosts over my face every time he exhales. His eyes are luminous and wide, moonlight glinting from them as if his irises were made of silver. They gently flutter closed.

  “Simon.” He says in a hoarse voice and I reach up slowly and trail my fingers down his cheek. His eyes flash open and his hand encircles my wrist. I freeze for an eternal moment, heart shuddering to a halt.

  “I-I didn’t mean-” He starts, eyes still a chaos of churning metal.

  “I know.” I say quietly. He sighs, something akin to relief fluttering over his features and he pulls me closer. So close that there is no distance between us at all, not anymore.

  I hold his head between my hands and stare at his desolate features for a second longer, before our lips meet. There is no fighting this time, no angry violence or clawing but emotion underlies every caress, every touch and I let my love for him flow from my body into his until there is no _me_ and _him_ , only _us_ and it’s like realising that this is where you were meant to be all along, like coming home to a place where everyone is like you and everything is soft and seamless although passion trembles beneath every action we make. We kiss and touch and break down every barrier that remains between us but it’s less of a destruction and more of a rising from the ashes.

  Finally, there is nothing left between us at all and I can feel his very skin deep inside me. The feeling is more than physical, more than emotional, more than even destiny intended and I can barely breath for fear of breaking this moment where nothing else matters, not Agatha, not school, not even either of us separately. As I stare into his eyes, his lips move. His words are quiet, so quiet you could miss them just by breathing, so quiet that they must be true, mean more than their simple phrasing.

  “I love you.” He whispers and I can’t contain my feelings any longer.

 

  We stay awake for a long time after that, lying on his bed, facing each other, eyes never wandering from each other’s faces.

  “I think you’ve ruined me, Baz.” I say softly, wonder still echoing through my tone, the corners of my mouth unable to lower.

  “I think you’ve killed me, Simon.” He says back, face deadly serious.

  “Call me that again” I whisper and he does, smiling. I close my eyes and lean my forehead against his and I don’t move until morning.

 

**Baz**

  I spend hours watching Simon’s gently flickering eyelids as he sleeps, feeling something entirely different to the futile longing for him that I’ve pushed aside for so long. This is something different. Something profound. Something that might even last. I glance across the room at the window that Simon left carelessly flung open and smile. _Fuck family code_ , I think- I’ll always be weak for forgetful heroes with golden hair.

  I nudge Simon awake when early sunlight starts to glow against the horizon and he yawns and stretches, oblivious to the way his sleepy features so close to mine makes me shiver in elation. I try to hide my nervousness of how he will react to waking up in the same fucking bed as me but he just grins casually.

  “Ready to fuck with everyone?” He smirks. I roll my eyes but don’t ask what he means and get up, excitement fizzing along every nerve.

  We both change and make our way down to the stairs. He grabs my hand as we approach the entrance to the hall, lacing our fingers together and I halt in my tracks.

  “What are you planning?” I ask, eyes narrowing at him suspiciously.

  “Nothing.” He says innocently although he ruins it by smirking at me evilly.

  I stare at him for a beat longer before shrugging. Whatever he’s planning, what do I care? I’m too exhilarated from last night to care.

  He doesn’t release my hand as we walk into the hall and when no one but Bunce looks up, he shoves me against the wall and kisses me fiercely. I raise an eyebrow questioningly as he pulls back, not daring to look around at any of the people now staring at us incredulously.

  “I don’t care what anyone thinks.” He explains quietly, mouth close to my ear.

  “And what about fate?” I ask, because it needs to be asked, shoving my anxiety down as he ponders for a moment.

  A radiant smile takes over his face as he looks at me.

  “Fuck fate.” He says unceremoniously “I choose you.”

 

Fin


End file.
